I recently caught up with a couple of girlfriends that I used to work with, K and J. It was a Saturday night, K was having a facial in Camberwell that afternoon and we wanted to pick a place that was fairly central to all of us. Somewhere along Burke Road perhaps? How ’bout Trinitas Thai?

The restaurant is spread over 2 dimly lit floors and, from what I gathered from previous visits, obviously very popular amongst the locals. The style of food covers a broad spectrum of Thai cuisine, with its menu divided into traditional, contemporary and fusion. We spent ages poring over the menu and finally each picked a main course and ordered a side of wild rice and roti to share.

The servings were large and the flavours tantalising. I don’t think I’ve ever had a proper pad thai – a soggy, food court version maybe, but not a restaurant quality version. Maybe it was due to my lack of pad thai experience, but the Trinitas pad thai was the best I’ve ever had! It had a sweet and tangy flavour, with fat, juicy prawns tossed amongst the long strings of rice noodles. The basil beef was also delicious and came with long, tender slices of beef. The chicken curry was fairly standard and a little watery, but it didn’t really matter since we were already too full from the other dishes to finish the curry. Of course, being too full from mains doesn’t necessarily translate to being too full for dessert…

The desserts weren’t fancy, but nonetheless very enjoyable. The mango ice cream with lychees tasted like summer – all sweet and refreshing. The black sticky rice with turnip was an interesting combination of sweet and savoury and went well with the coconut milk.

Trinitas Thai is one of the those in-between restaurants that seems to have perfected the balancing act – not too casual, but not too formal. Basically, the perfect place to catch up with a few friends over a few glasses of wine (they have BYO) if you’re after some good Thai food that isn’t too full on. And at less than $30 a head, no wonder it’s as popular as it is.